PC Stuttering

[mauryman]

Hey guys, I have been having a wierd problem with this PC. Randomly it will start running really choppy/stuttering. This includes the mouse and sound.

I have checked MSCONFIG for any wierd start up or services that could be causing it as well as adware but have not found anything.

The stuttering usually happens when i have a game open but it can also happen when i only have media player/solitare open. as well as some other odd times.

the system originally had 2 gigs of ram, i tried them each 1 at a time and it didnt fix the problem.

the system is a
Dell XPS
Pentium 4 3.4 GHZ
1 GB Ram
Geforce 6800

 

[CertInProgress]

Have you tried running Disk Defragmenter, checked in Device Manager for yellow exclamation points(!), any recent hardware changes, updated drivers, etc?

Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.
-Sam Ewing-

 

[CertInProgress]

As a quick update, I found this quite informative post that might be helpful to you, as it sounded like your issue:

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.co...157-choppy-sound-dell-dimension-3000-a-2.html

Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.
-Sam Ewing-

 

[mauryman]

I have done disk defragmenter and i have no yellow exclamation marks on my device manager. also tried what they posted in that forum you said but their problem seems to be constant. Mine appears randomly.

 

[CertInProgress]

Ah, well im not completely sure (I'll ponder it) but if I see anything Ill keep an eye out for ya. Have you contacted Dell by chance?

Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.
-Sam Ewing-

 

[mauryman]

thanks, my warrenty is gone from dell so i dont think talkin to them would help much.

also i have downloaded the latest bios drivers and stuff from dell.

 

[Cwgunder]

I like some of the info in the link that CertInProgress posted. specificaly:

"Windows XP downgrades the Ultra DMA transfer mode after receiving more than six CRC errors. Whenever possible, the operating system will step down one UDMA mode at a time (from UDMA mode 4 to UDMA mode 3, and so on).

So I uninstalled the Secondary IDE channel and rebooted. Windows XP reinstalled the IDE drivers and redetected the Cd-rom drives. The drives came back to UDMA Mode 2 with no choppy sound anymore!"

What kind of hard drives do you have in the system. IDE, SATA? It may be worth checking the bios for DMA options and/or removing the controlers from device manager and letting them be reinstalled.

Also, in the event it's a software problem, the next time this happends. Take a look at task manager and see how many process you have open also, check the performance tab to see if the processor is pinned at 100 percent. If it is infact pinned, then, in task manager, click view, and select columns, and select the page faults column. You should be able to see if there's any process that has an outragouse number of page faults (virtual memory read errors). some is normal. Specificaly, i'm looking for something with a couple hundred thousand page faults.

Hope this helps

Good Luck!

Chris

 

[Cwgunder]

oh and I forgot to put in the last rely that when checking task manager check the CPU usage column to see which process is pinning the processor. Then... check for page faults to see it it's an IDE controller or virtual memory problem.

Hope this helps

Good Luck!

Chris

 

[mauryman]

here is a screenshot of my processes

http://www.ffxi-app.com/processes.JPG

this game seems to reproduce the problem pretty much every time.

pol.exe (final fantasy 11)

 

[mauryman]

the harddrive is SATA also